The country’s authorities put the leak that occurred on the 15th when a ship was transferring its cargo to a refinery at 1.9 million liters of oil.
The Peruvian Prosecutor’s Office accuses four Repsol executives of allegedly committing the crime of pollution of its aggravated type for the spill of crude oil by the Spanish oil company on the coast of Peru that occurred on the 15th. “They have the status of being investigated and will be notified so that they can present their allegations to the Public Prosecutor’s Office,” prosecutor Julio César Guzmán reported yesterday.
The Peruvian Justice points to the executive director of Repsol, the Spaniard Jaime Fernández-Cuesta Luca de Tena, and three other Peruvian directors of the La Pampilla refinery, where the spill occurred, as being responsible for it, as well as for having delayed stop the leak of crude oil, and therefore the advance of contamination, and even minimize it. The defendants, who have been banned from leaving the country for 18 months, could face between four and six years in prison.
The spill occurred when the Italian ship ‘Mare Doricum’ – now immobilized by the Peruvian authorities under a bail of 35 million euros – transferred to the refinery located in Ventanilla, municipality of Callao, 30 kilometers north of the capital Lima, nearly one million barrels of oil from Brazil for processing. Although at first Repsol reported a leak of less than a barrel of crude oil and later acknowledged the spill of some 6,000 barrels, the Peruvian authorities put the number of barrels spilled into the sea at 11,900, which is equivalent to almost 1.9 million litres. However, the Spanish oil company sets the amount of oil spilled at 10,396 barrels, of which it ensures that oil equivalent to 35% would have already been recovered.
The environmental catastrophe has affected approximately 100 kilometers of the country’s coastline, while the area covered by the oil slick extends approximately 11.9 kilometers between the sea and the 21 beaches that have been damaged, according to Peruvian environmental authorities. The spill has caused the death of an undetermined amount of fish and seabirds, in addition to leaving hundreds of artisanal fishermen unemployed, who these days have staged protests against the Spanish company.
Strong waves by a volcano
Repsol attributes the accident to the tsunami with strong waves caused by the volcanic eruption in Tonga that same day, which raised the sea level in an unusual way on the Pacific coast and supposedly caused the breakage of a mooring of the ship that transferred the crude oil to the refinery.
In a statement issued from Madrid, the oil company guaranteed that it will continue to “fully cooperate” with the Peruvian Justice and assured that its main concern is the “cleaning of the environment.”
“We will continue to fully cooperate with any criminal investigation, as we are already doing with the ongoing preliminary investigation,” the company said. “Our main concern is the cleanliness of the environment. Repsol is putting all its efforts into the cleanup work as quickly as possible to advance in the cleanup of the affected areas,” the company added.
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